Search tips

Some searches can produce hundreds of results pages linking to websites that are not relevant to your search. To avoid this happening, be careful when choosing your search words. The more specific your words are, the better your search results will be.

Follow the tips below to improve your search results.

Searching for a phrase or words that appear together

Use quotation marks to search for a phrase of several words together. Here's an example:

Searching for more than one word

Eliminating non-essential words from your search

Avoid using words that are not relevant in your searches. Including words like 'how, and, in, to or as' in a search will give a list of irrelevant search results. Only use the names of people, places or things that you want to find.

Do not include unnecessary words in your search

Only include the important words - Oxford museums

Searching with more than one key word

Use the + sign to search for webpages with more than one key word.

Use the + sign to search for webpages with more than one key word. Adding a plus to your search will ensure that all your results include the key words. For example, if you wanted to find out about recycling paper in Cardiff, you can improve your search by typing:

Removing words from your search

Include a -sign against words you don't want included in search results

Put a - sign in front of any words that you don't want to be included in your search results. For example, you might want to search for information about the place Wimbledon, but not not about tennis.

Now practise these search techniques in an

To practise more searching techniques [searching techniques: techniques which make searching for information on the Internet easier ], visit BBC Webwise.